


Crownless

by Kriseis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post - A Dance With Dragons, will eventually deal with all characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:44:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kriseis/pseuds/Kriseis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Snow writes to Meereen in a desperate bid for reinforcements.</p><p>Davos Seaworth lingers in Braavos, unable to find a ship willing to bear him to Eastwatch.</p><p>A nameless girl begins to regain her identity.</p><p>And in the east, an army waits for an absent queen.</p><p>Far to the north, the enemy's forces are gathering...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the dark I hear a call

**Author's Note:**

> The Davos and Arya bits may seem familiar. That's because I posted them separately as Those Who Wander, which was written for an exchange. They sort of worked their way into my big story, and... here you go.  
> Also: If your favorites aren't in this chapter, don't worry, everyone will get their turn. (Everyone. This is going to spin way out of my control, I just know it...)  
> I don't promise speedy updates [...] Edit: It seems to be coming out to about one chapter a month, and this is likely to persist until school gets out.  
> Enjoy, and if I've made any mistakes (canon contradictions or misspellings) please don't hesitate to correct me.

He doesn’t die, but he does sleep. And as he sleeps, he dreams.

He dreams of Winterfell, first, Winterfell in a time before he ever knew it, but somehow just the same. There’s a boy who looks like him in the yard, but his opponent’s hair is just as dark as his own, rather than Tully red. A boy that isn’t Bran climbs in the Godswood, and a girl that isn’t Arya steals her brother’s breeches. This Winterfell is not afire, but the family within burns all the same.

The dream changes, then, to another family, and this one sets their own fire. It consumes them, one by one, until there is only a naked girl standing in the ashes. She looks at him, blinks slowly, and then turns. He watches her walk away.

He watches the sky grow dark and not lighten again, above the great wall of ice that he has made his home. He watches the corpses march, and those who command them. He watches the fires slowly die. He watches the world of men falling.

When Jon Snow wakes, the wildling Val is sitting on one side of him, and the red priestess on the other. The priestess starts to speak, but Jon won’t let her.

“Paper,” he tries to say, and is astonished to find his voice so broken. He clears his throat and tries again. This time Val understands; she looks at him strangely, but crosses the room to his desk (these are his quarters, he realizes - what happened to Bowen Marsh?) and fetches a blank scroll and a quill. Once she has placed them on the stand beside his bed, he gestures for them both to leave. Melisandre tries to speak again. He will not hear it. He knows now what she would say, and he wants no part in it. At last she leaves. Val follows her,  and he readies his quill, wondering just how to begin. _Formality would be best_ , he decides, and begins to write.

It is a desperate chance, but the only chance they have.

_To Daenerys of the House Targaryen, first of her name, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men..._

* * *

 

“ _...Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm,_ ” reads Ser Barristan Selmy. Tyrion frowns, peering at the broken seal on the scroll.

“This is from the Night’s Watch,” he comments.

Selmy gives him a glance laden with thinly veiled distaste. The old knight doesn’t like him a bit, but he could hardly turn him away when he’d almost single-handedly brought the Second Sons’ loyalty to the cause. (Mormont would disagree, of course, but Mormont isn’t here.)

“I know the seal of the Watch when I see it, Lannister,” says Selmy, looking up from the letter.

“Of course you do; my point is that when I was in King’s Landing, we received a series of pleas for help from the Wall, much more than would be expected. Of course, my nephew wouldn’t even consider it, as they were addressed to any man calling himself a king, but I don’t think anything was ever sent to our absent queen.”

“To my knowledge, there wasn’t.”

Tyrion gestures at the letter. “Well, then, shall we see what has changed?”

Selmy is loathe to obey him, he is sure, but still he continues.

“ _The Watch is failing. The monsters from the stories we were told as children have returned, and they march against us. Our numbers dwindle by the day, and no new recruits appear. Stannis Baratheon left with his troops and we have not heard from him since. Even had he remained, it would only prolong the battle. When our strength is broken, the Wall will fall, and the Others will swarm over Westeros and your people as they have not since the Long Night._

_The only way to kill our enemies is with dragonglass or fire. Dragonglass is limited, and we have no good way of weaponizing flame. Your dragons are our last and only hope._

_So, I beg of you, your Grace, come to our aid. Bring all your forces, man or beast. If you ever hope to claim your birthright, you must first ensure its continued existence._

_Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch._ ”

They are silent for a moment, before Selmy begins uncertainly. “This Jon Snow-”

“I know him,” says Tyrion. “He’s Ned Stark’s bastard, and every bit as honorable as his father. When I met him, his head was full of false tales of the glory of the Watch. When we parted, he had learned better.” As much as the thought terrifies him, he has to add, “If he says that... that the Others have returned... then as much as I’d like to laugh at his claims, I can’t. He wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true.”

“Gods be good,” mutters Selmy. “But, the _Others..._ ”

“I know,” Tyrion says heavily. “I know.”

They are silent for some time, but they both know that they will have to decide on a course of action, and soon. And they both know, deep down, what must be done.

"Her Grace has been missing for months," Selmy tries at last. "Only she can control the dragons-"

"Not even she, you mean," says Tyrion.

Selmy grits his teeth and does not address Tyrion's correction. "We have no way of bringing the dragons to the Wall," he insists.

Tyrion sighs heavily and prepares to voice perhaps the most idiotic plan that he has concocted in all his years.

"Viserion has grown rather fond of me, I think."

 

When Barristan sees the cream and gold dragon take to the air with a small figure on its back, he swears softly. "Seven hells, he's done it." Then he turns to Grey Worm and gives the order to mobilize.

 _Gods save us all_ ,  he thinks. _Tyrion Lannister has a dragon._

* * *

 

She’s been watching the man for two weeks now. He spends most of his time by the docks, speaking to the captains of the ships that arrived that day. She hasn’t gotten close enough to listen in, but these conversations always seem to end with the captains laughing and walking away.

When he’s spoken to all the captains, he turns to their crews. This is easier to listen in on, and she’s surprised to find that he asks them of Westeros, and of the Wall. They never have much to tell him, though, and she’s lying to herself if she pretends she isn’t just as frustrated as he is by the vague answers.

His clothes are filthy, and she isn’t sure where he’s been staying, who he is, or where he’s going. And, though she’s already collected her three things to tell the kindly man come the new moon, she wants to learn this secret for some reason she can’t quite explain to herself. And so, at last, she speaks to him.

One day, after he’s been laughed away by some wiry trader, she taps him on the shoulder. Perhaps he’s already fallen victim to the city’s pickpockets, for even as he turns, he holds his purse close.

“What do you want?” She won’t begrudge him his testiness; he’s clearly been frustrated in his efforts yet again. But what exactly _are_ those efforts?

She won’t try to trick him into telling her what she wants to know; somehow, she is sure he wouldn’t fall for it. She may as well ask him outright. “Where are you trying to go?”

He regards her carefully for a moment, and she stares right back.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I like to know things.”

Well, he can hardly fault her there. And, though it may be against his better judgement, from what he’s learned of Braavos, he tells her.

“I’m trying to find a ship that will take me to the castle of Eastwatch, on the Wall. As you might imagine, nobody’s exactly been-”

But even as he tries to elaborate, he realizes that the girl is gone.

* * *

 

She knows exactly why nobody will take him to the Wall. She’s known for some time now, and has tried to forget it, because it’s a little too close to that dead girl she once knew, but it’s always been there.

Some time ago, rumors began to sweep the city of things awakening in the north of Westeros. Dark things. _Cold_ things. Some shivered when they heard the stories, but some shook them off, laughing. (The laughter has always seemed a little empty, a little fearful, to the girl in the shadows.) She knew in her bones that the tales were true.

She never brought them to the kindly man.

But she listened. Nobody seemed to agree on anything for sure except that the Others have risen and are marching on the Wall.

And now this strange soldier wants to go there himself. She knows he won’t have much luck. No ship has set sail for Eastwatch in months.

Even now, as she hurries away from the stranger, she passes two Western men discussing this very topic. “It would be alright if there were a Stark back in Winterfell,” one is saying, and she slows to listen despite herself.

The second man seems doubtful. “I don’t know that a lord would make all that much difference.”

His friend shakes his head. “That’s cause you weren’t raised in the North. The Starks have backed up the Watch for thousands of years. They could go to defend the Wall with all the strength of the north behind them. It’s only ever been the Starks who could raise the whole north, Robett. Without a Stark, I fear there is little hope for the Watch.”

She has to bite her tongue and move past them to stop the words that sprang to her lips. _They aren’t without a Stark._

* * *

 

The men are getting restless, he knows. His dreams still show him dragons, and one is growing ever more clear, but his brothers fear his dreams, and telling of them would only increase suspicion. All he can do is try to reassure them that help is coming.

Most of them don’t think help even exists anymore. It has been four months since he sent the raven to Daenerys Targaryen, and in that time they have lost nearly half their fighters.They have resigned themselves to a meaningless death in the futile battle against winter. But Jon knows differently. For whatever else he may be, he is still a Stark, and he has been preparing for the coming of winter all his life. His only fear is that when their battle finally comes, he will be the only one left to face it.

* * *

 

He thinks he’s nearly mastered the art of dragon-riding.

At first it was nearly impossible. He could tolerate the heat, but his stunted legs made it exceedingly difficult to grip the dragon’s neck. But then he’d designed a saddle and had it made, and after a few adjustments, both he and Viserion were happy.

The troops had marched from Meereen and were moving as fast as could be expected, but in the skies with the dragon, Tyrion found himself flying back and forth over the column to avoid leaving them behind. He can hardly imagine how exhausted the Unsullied, the Second Sons, and all the others must be. He is only glad that he need not walk.

Today when he flies ahead he sees a city in the distance. According to the maps he consults every night, it can only be Braavos. He looks back and finds that he can still make out the dark mass of soldiers marching after him. They are likely to reach their destination by the end of the day tomorrow. In Braavos, they will buy ships and sail for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

He doesn’t want to think about what will happen then. Jaime was always the one meant for war, but it’s Tyrion who is riding one of the greatest weapons ever seen towards what will surely be one of the greatest wars ever fought. He’s read countless books on any subject that could possibly be of use, but he still feels less prepared than he’s ever been.

He turns back towards the column. He’ll send their fastest rider ahead to begin the search for ships. He’d do it himself, but somehow he thinks Viserion might be less than the ideal envoy.

* * *

 

The girl finds him again a week later. Lord Manderly supplied him with plenty of coin, but after so many months it’s beginning to run out, and when he does find a ship willing to take him to Eastwatch, he’ll need to be able to pay. He still needs to eat, though, so he sits on the dock with a makeshift pole, halfheartedly hoping and not really believing that a fish might bite. That’s where she approaches him.

He hears a clearing of the throat, and looks up to find that she has joined him uninvited, sitting crosslegged beside him with a basket in her lap.

“You know, there are better ways to get food.”

He isn’t quite sure what to make of her, really. She’s can’t be more than four-and-ten, maybe less, and yet she wanders the docks alone, approaching strangers and speaking the Common Tongue far better than any native-born Braavosi he’s spoken with so far. And then there’s the strange interest she’s taken in him.

Instead of acknowledging her... was it advice? She really just sounded a bit amused, but he didn’t think that was why she’d sought him out again. “What is it you want with me, girl?”

“Cat. I’m called Cat. And I want to know why you’re trying to get to the Wall.”

“And why should I tell you my business, Cat?”

In response, she reaches into her basket and withdraws a handful of cockles.

He has to laugh as he reaches out to take one. “Fair enough.”

She waits patiently as he eats several of the cockles. When his hunger has sufficiently abated, he tells her what she wants to know.

* * *

 

“My name is Ser Davos Seaworth,” the man tells her. “and last I heard, I was Hand of the King to Stannis Baratheon, though, as many believe me dead, I may have been replaced. I was sent by my king to try to win White Harbor to our cause. The Manderlys promised to swear fealty if I managed to retrieve Rickon Stark-”

“ _Rickon?_ ” she blurts, unable to contain herself. “Rickon died! Him and Bran, Theon-”

The knight is watching her carefully, and she realizes too late that she’s speaking as though familiar with the people she names. Still, he answers her. “Yes, it was believed that Rickon Stark and his older brother were killed by Theon Greyjoy,” he says, “but a squire who escaped the burning of Winterfell told Lord Manderly that the boys were still alive and had escaped. Manderly sent me to find Rickon, who was believed to be on Skagos. It took me a long time, but I managed to find him and smuggle him and the wolf back to White Harbor.”

Her mind is reeling. _Rickon alive. And maybe Bran, too..._ She barely manages to remind herself that she does not know these boys, that she is no one, and has no brothers.

Davos is still speaking. “Manderly put me on a ship here and gave me coin to pay for passage to Eastwatch, from which I mean to ride to Castle Black and rejoin the king’s army... Only I’ve found that nobody is willing to sail anywhere near the Wall.”

She nods a little, and, knowing that his story is over, stands to leave. She gives him a few more cockles from her basket, then returns the rest to Brusco.

For the first time in months, she dreams of wolves.


	2. But not yet weary are our feet

The she-wolf raises her nose to sniff the air, and her pack waits behind her. She stands atop a hill near a great river, overlooking a massive structure of rock. Across the water, an identical mass stands sentinel, connected to the first by a long bridge. The she-wolf growls lowly at the sight, feeling some deep-rooted hatred for the place that she cannot quite comprehend, only experience and act on. She is quite sure of one thing, however.

Her brother died here.

Behind her, her pack senses her unease, and begins to imitate her growling. It has been days since they had a hunt, and they are growing restless. They crave the taste of blood, and so does she, but they will have to wait a little longer.

She turns away and continues to lead her pack up the river, as she has been doing for weeks. They will find a narrower stretch of water and cross there. The twin fortresses will fall, but not today. Not to these wolves.

They have another battle to fight.

* * *

 

He doesn’t know she keeps coming to see him, and he isn’t quite sure why he keeps talking to her. Cat - “Cat of the Canals,” he’s heard her called - is surprisingly good company, and in any case, she’s keeping him fed. That’s another thing that confuses him about her: why does she keep giving him free food? Surely she must work for one of the salesmen in the city, how has he not noticed that she isn’t giving him enough money to account for the number of cockles that’ve disappeared from the basket she returns?

It’s best not to think about it, he decides. Cat clearly knows what she’s doing, and he needs the food, so he won’t protest. And while he eats, she tells him the rumors.

That’s another thing about Cat; she seems to know every scrap of information available on the streets of Braavos. She can’t be more than four and ten, but she is able to tell him more than any of the sailors he speaks to on the docks. She gives him the rumors he actually wants, too. Unlike the men, who he must listen to for almost half an hour in order to glean any relevant information from, she speaks only of the matters that he is concerned with. There is still little enough to hear as it is - nobody sails to or from the Wall these days, and the only news comes out of White Harbor, leagues away from the Wall and even from Winterfell.

She does tell him all that there is to tell, though. There’s no news of Stannis (the area surrounding Winterfell has been caught in a dreadful snowstorm for weeks with no sign of slowing down, and the other northmen are beginning to worry), and the news from the Wall is so bad that he almost wishes there wasn’t anything to hear.

The Watch is in desperate need of men. Stannis brought his army north, but he took much of it when he left for Winterfell, and the entire Wall cannot be held by the remaining kingsmen, the Watch, and the wildlings that the new Lord Commander has allowed through. And the things attacking it are the stuff of nightmares and nursemaids’ tales. Dead men come in the night, walking about as though they’d never been killed, attacking men who were once their friends and those who were enemies without distinction. Nothing seems to harm them but fire, and their eyes are invariably a blue so bright it almost seems to glow.

Cat is quiet when she tells him this, and grows quieter still as she continues. “It’s not even the wights that the men are really worried about, though. It’s their masters, the ones that control them. No one’s really sure what they are, only that they aren’t human and never were. They’re so _cold_ , they’re so cold it almost _burns_ , and nothing can even kill them, nothing but dragonglass, and they think maybe Valyrian steel too but nobody’s been able to try it because the only Valyrian steel at the Wall is with the Lord Commander and the Others haven’t tried to march on Castle Black, yet.”

She suddenly looks very afraid, this girl that has made herself his friend, and with her usual confidence stripped away he realizes how very young she must be. And when she speaks again, her voice sounds different, too. The Braavosi accent she’s always spoken with seems to slip, and he hears another tone, one that feels familiar but he can’t quite place. He’s certain that this voice is her true one though, if only for the raw expression on her face.

“It won’t be too long, though. The Watch is weak, and the Others are strong, and they’ll attack soon. And Castle Black won’t be able to throw them back. The Wall will fall.” Her voice is so quiet that Davos isn’t sure he makes out her last words properly. “The North will fall.”

* * *

 

By the time they reach the city, a delegation has assembled. It awaits them at the gates that guard the long walkway that stretches across the water towards the sprawling mass of buildings and canals that is Braavos.

Tyrion, after some debate, has elected to leave Viserion at the back of their host and ride out with Ser Barristan. As the dragon rider and the queensguard (not to mention self-appointed Hand) respectively, they are the undisputed representatives of this army, if only for lack of a better option.

They approach the delegation on horseback, so Tyrion is as tall as any of them, but their leader rises above the rest, carried in a sedan chair. Tyrion wonders if the Sealord himself has seen fit to greet them in person.

He hasn’t, as it turns out. The man lounging on the shoulders of the servants (or are they slaves?) is introduced with some fancy title that Tyrion can’t pronounce, but from what he can gather, the man acts as a sort of Hand to the Sealord, and Tyrion decides to regard him as such.

They are given apologies for the Sealord’s absence (he has fallen quite ill, apparently), which takes him a bit aback - he’s always heard that the Braavosi are a proud people, and had thought that the Sealord wouldn’t wish to lower himself for the sake of a dubiously identified army at his gates.

He glances back at Viserion. _On the other hand, perhaps he’s wise to try to flatter a man with a dragon._ For the first time in his life, the respect he receives is not thanks to his birth, his coin, or his father’s reputation. _They don’t fear Lord Tywin now,_ he realizes. _They don’t fear my relation to the crown, or the debts my house is famous for paying. They fear Tyrion Lannister._

Except that isn’t quite right, either. Even the highborn in Essos don’t pay very much attention to the politics of Westeros. His time in Pentos taught him that. Illyrio Mopatis had not seen him as heir to a great house or as the son and murderer of one of the most powerful men the real had seen in a hundred years. To the cheesemonger he had only been a convenient piece to bring into play when it became necessary; not a particularly powerful piece, but one that, if played right, might just win him the game. Tyrion had only been a horse or perhaps an elephant in Illyrio’s grand game of cyvasse, and he didn’t like being another man’s pawn. He is reclaiming his place as a player. _My Lord of Cheese, you have played your dragon too soon, and I think you’ll find mine is quite a bit more persuasive._

The Sealord of Braavos does not fear Tyrion Lannister. He fears dragonfire. 

* * *

 

The air at the docks is flooded with talk of the dragon.

Davos listens without asking questions, as has become his way. He’s found that engaging in too much conversation can arouse unwanted suspicions, especially when his usual line of questioning is so unusual. But today, everyone is saying everything he needs to hear without prompting.

There is a dragon at the gate.

While some are thrilled and voice their hopes that it might take to the air so it could be seen from the city, these are mostly the younger men or boys who joined a trader’s crew in the hope of adventure. The more weathered seamen glance up nervously at such declarations, thinking of tales half-remembered from early days when they were only beginning to learn the way of the sea, tales from times long past when wild dragons owned the skies over the Narrow Sea and roasted sailors in their sleep when they grew hungry. Davos has heard those tales often enough, and he’s told them a fair amount, too. So he silently adds his prayers to the chorus that must have arisen since the dragon was spotted. _Oh Mother, in all your mercy - please keep that beast on the ground._

Once the delegation sent to treat with those at the head of the army (and Davos starts when he hears that - how did all these gossipping fools neglect to mention that there was a bloody _army_ involved?) returns, it doesn’t take very long for details to sweep through the city, and Davos knows that his chance has come.

“It’s the Imp,” Cat tells him, watching him keenly as he eats the cockles she’s brought him today. “The Imp’s riding one of the dragons that Daenerys Targaryen hatched, and nobody’s sure where she’s gone, she’s flown off on one of the others. But the Imp and Ser Barristan got a raven in Meereen from the Wall asking for help, and the Imp got a dragon to listen to him, so now the whole army’s marching west to fight at the Wall. They’re buying up most of the ships in the city in order to get across the Narrow Sea, and they’re looking for men with experience at sea willing to captain the ships. Apparently most of the soldiers are Unsullied, from Astapor, and they’re not really trained for this sort of thing, so - where are you going?”

Davos has gotten to his feet and is collecting what little he owns. He glances up at her apologetically. “They’re going to the Wall. This is my chance - I must return to King Stannis’s men, and to him, if I can. And if the Imp’s really that desperate for captains, they may even give me my own ship.”

Determining that he has everything, he turns to bid her farewell. She is watching him steadily, and it unnerves him a bit. “Thank you, Cat,” he tells her. “For everything. You’ve done so much for me - I’m sorry I don’t have anything to repay you with.”

She says nothing, and after a moment he nods at her awkwardly and sets off down the narrow streets towards the docks.

* * *

 

The girl watches him go, and continues to stare thoughtfully in the direction that he wandered off in for a long time after he’s passed out of her sight. Her face is calm, but her mind is at war with itself.

One part of her is furious. He was the first friend she’d had in a long time, and now he’s gone. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to have a friend. _And now he’s l_ _eft you, too,_ hisses a voice at the back of her mind. _Just like all the others._ She has to banish the voice before it starts listing off all those who have left her. That happens, when she lets herself get angry.

Another voice whispers a response. _He’s got a good reason, though,_ it reminds her. _He is going to fulfill his duty._ And she is reminded horribly of another man, not unlike him, who valued his duty and his honor more than most knights, who went somewhere he’d rather not have gone for the sake of a man who was both his friend and his king. She tries to crush this line of thought, too, but it follows her all the way down the street, and it distracts her so much that she doesn’t even realize where she’s going until she’s standing at the bottom of the steps looking up at the doors.

 _Why am I here?_ she asks no one. But the voice that answers is someone. _Because your ship is leaving, wolf girl._

And then she is climbing the steps.

It’s not the new moon tonight, but the Kindly Man does not seem surprised when she presents herself to him. He only asks her what she has learned, as he does every time she returns to the House of Black and White, and she answers.

“A dragon is flying for the Wall,” she begins, though she is sure that he already knows this. He nods, though, and waits for her to continue.

“Most of the ships in the city have been purchased for the use of the army at the gates,” she says, and this will be nothing new to him, either. He nods again, still watching her expectantly.

 _He knows_ , she thinks. _He knows, but he wants me to say it._

“And what is the third thing you have come to tell me?” he asks, and she refuses to look away, feeling that this is some test that she must pass. Everything is a test, with him.

And when she speaks, her voice in uncolored by the time she’s spent in Braavos, that lilting accent falling away like all the other masks she’s worn, the names she’s taken. She won’t take another name ever again, she suddenly swears to herself. She won’t.

Despite her newfound conviction, it is still hard to force the words past her lips for the first time in so long. But they get out all the same.

“Arya Stark,” she says in the bold northern tones of her youth, and isn’t it _hard_ to say that name, “has returned to Braavos.” 

* * *

 

She leaves the building slowly, with something inexplicable holding her back, but something stronger pulling her forward. She wears only the light and dirty clothes of Cat of the Canals, and carries nothing. She won’t need coin where she’s going. That time is done.

She counts the steps as she descends from the House of Black and White. She had been afraid that she’d forgotten, but it is with utter certainty that she crouches on the step to move the bricks.

She reaches through the hole she’s made in the crumbling wall and her hand closes around a thin sword, which she slowly draws out. The sight of it breaks what walls she still had within her, releasing a flood of images and memories and names. She doesn’t try to shove them away, this time, but she closes her eyes and holds them back for now. “I’m coming,” she whispers to them. “I’m not going to forget anymore.”

Arya Stark gets to her feet with shaking hands, shoves her sword through her belt, and sets off toward the docks. Her neck tingles, but she refuses to look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're still focusing on Davos, Arya, and some Tyrion - more characters will become more prominent when I've got them all in Westeros.  
> Regarding the way Arya took to Davos - I feel like Davos is very similar to Ned in a lot of ways, and that on some level she'd see that and choose to trust him (insofar as she trusts anyone at this point).  
> I didn't mean to take this long, but I had finals, so, uh, yeah.  
> Next chapter will be the journey across the Narrow Sea.


	3. Across the streaming tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya, Davos, and Tyrion cross the Narrow Sea, Jon Snow awaits his reinforcements, and Rickon is frustrated by his caretakers.

Davos is utterly bewildered by the girl aboard his ship. She seems to be everywhere at once, and somehow manages to help rather than being in the way. The unfamiliar crew he’s been given - made up of Unsullied and sellswords, which seems a horribly strange alliance - seems equally bemused by her, but they let her move about, and eventually call out to her to assign her tasks. She seems pleased by this, as though she really does want to earn her keep, despite the way she simply marched aboard.

Davos was struck dumb when Cat of the Canals stepped onto his ship, not least by the way that she carried herself. It was certainly her, but the way she walked was different, and despite the confident way she held herself, she was chewing her lip in a clear show of anxiety. She spotted him and stepped forward with purpose, but froze when a voice cut through the crisp morning air.

“And who might you be?”

She spun around and had to look down to locate the source of the voice. When Tyrion Lannister declared that he would be sailing with him, Davos had been surprised and not exactly pleased, but he had no place complaining. Cat looked down at him, and her eyes were wild with either anger or fear, or perhaps both. But she seemed to recover quickly, for she raised her chin with a touch of defiance and answered him.

“Nan,” said the girl that Davos had known as Cat for months, speaking in that unidentifiable accent he’d heard her use only once before. “I’m Nan.”

The Imp stared at her for a moment, turning his head and squinting slightly at her as if trying to recall something that he never really knew. After a long moment, he said, “And will you be sailing with us, Nan?”

 “Yes.”

Davos almost spoke, then - this was his ship, and the Wall was no place for a young girl - but Tyrion nodded and said, “Very well, then,” and suddenly it wasn’t his place to turn her away.

Watching her now, he’s almost glad that she’s here. Whatever name she’s using, she’s fairly good company.

* * *

Nobody here listens to him, and he doesn’t like it.

He’s trying to tell Wynnie about the wolves, and she tells him that he only dreamed them. Rickon’s decided that she’d stupid. Of _course_ he’d dreamed them; how else would he know? Wynnie never believes him when he tells her what Shaggy knows, and she never tells him anything. He’s too young, she says, and that’s stupid, too, because in the same breath she calls him Lord Stark. She keeps doing that, even when he tells her to stop. He’s _not_ Lord Stark, Bran is, now that Father and Robb have gone away south. Rickon hates the south. Nobody ever comes back after they go south.

He likes Wylla better. She just calls him Lord Rickon, once he tells her that Bran is still alive. She believes him. She usually does, so he decides she’s his favorite, even if she does have green hair. He wishes Wylla were here now, but she’s off somewhere (Wynnie won’t tell him where) and only her sister is here to watch him.

He doesn’t _need_ watching.

“They’re coming north,” he insists as Wynnie works on her stitches. “The pack is _huge_ and my - Shaggy’s sister is leading it.” He’s learned that it unnerves even Wylla when he speaks as if he _is_ Shaggy.

“All right, Lord Stark,” she sighs, and he knows that she still doesn’t believe him.

It doesn’t matter. He knows. Shaggy knows. And he thinks they’ll all see, soon enough.

 

* * *

Tyrion keeps a careful watch on the girl as they cross the Narrow Sea. It’s not that he thinks she plans to sabotage them - her eagerness to join them seemed more a product of wanting to be where they were going. But there’s something about her that tugs at his memory. Her voice is distinctly northern, and aside from her deeply tanned skin, her coloring is typical of that area. Still, there’s something more.

He watches her as she re-ties a loose knot. She lifts her eyes to meet his, and he nearly takes a step back at the fire he feels in her gaze. He stares back at her for a long moment, then turns away.

That’s the other thing. She seems to have something personal against him, and he has no idea what it could be. It may just be the fact that he’s a Lannister, actually. He expects that he will spend the rest of his life enduring the glares of northmen for what his family has done, never mind what he’s doing now to help them.

He finds he can’t blame them, really.

* * *

 He holds the letter like it’s made of gold, and reads it out before the assembled Watch and Free Folk. He watches his brothers carefully, and the cheering tells him that at last he no longer has to fear for his life. Not from them, anyway. There are still many who wish him dead, but Bowen Marsh is locked in his ice cell, and the rest are now hailing Jon as their savior.

He’s not sure they should, really. The letter from Braavos is encouraging, but in his dreams he has seen the full extent of their foe, and he fears that one dragon won’t be enough. _One dragon and an army of thousands_ , he reminds himself, but honestly, he isn’t overly optimistic about the army. The letter mentioned sellswords, and he supposes that some of them might know something of the cold, but they can’t be relied upon to stand and fight when attacked by the unkillable. The bulk of the army consists of the Unsullied. Jon knows their reputation, and though he understands that they are considered by most to be one of the best military machines in the world, he has doubts. Not concerning their ability, of course, but still... the Unsullied are born in Essos, trained in Essos, and usually operate only in Essos, where it is always overwhelmingly hot. And they are on there way to the northern border of Westeros, where it is colder even than most Northmen will ever experience.

 _And it will only get colder._ Tyrion Lannister is bringing him warriors of the sun, and the Long Night is coming.

 

* * *

Nan (surely that is not her true name) comes to see him at their evening meal. He’s sitting with the Onion Knight, who Tyrion finds both amusing and fascinating, when she sits herself down beside them, not speaking, only staring at him. He glances at Davos in slight confusion, but the other man seems to be at a loss. They sit in slightly uncomfortable silence for a moment until she finally speaks.

“Why are we doing this?”

An odd question, Tyrion thinks, from a girl who’d wanted to accompany them so badly that she’d marched onto a ship without invitation and declared her intention to sail with them. “That’s what I’d like to ask, actually,” he ventures. “Why are we bringing a young girl away to a deadly war?”

“That’s not what I was asking,” she says in frustration, glaring at him. “Why are you going to the Wall?”

“Surely you have heard the rumors of what is rising in the North?”

“Of _course_ I have! I just don’t know why you’d care!”

 _Oh._ Yes, her animosity is definitely a product of his name. “Westeros is my home, too, Nan,” he says quietly. “I may not be a northman, but if the Wall falls, the Others will swarm down through the North and over the entire realm. Whatever you may think of me, I do not want that.”

She’s staring at him disbelievingly. “And you _believe_ in the Others.” The statement is blunt and a little sarcastic and it’s clear that she doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Yes, I do. I’ve met the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He was younger then, and a bit of a fool, but he took his work seriously. He would never write for help to _Daenerys Targaryen_ of all people if there weren’t an urgent threat that he knew his forces could not withstand unaided. Jon Snow knows what the Watch is, and it isn’t the shield that it was created to be.”

He stops talking abruptly, staring at Nan. She’s turned away now, and her hair is blocking her face from view, but he’s certain he saw something flash through her eyes when he said the name ‘Jon Snow’.

And suddenly he knows exactly where he’s seen those eyes before.

* * *

She stands at the rail of the ship, squinting against the sunset in an attempt to make out any hint of land on the horizon. It shouldn’t be much longer, Davos has told her. The seas have been growing more wild, and the air steadily colder. Maybe she should feel frozen, after so long in Braavos, and before that the South, but she only feels invigorated. _Melted_ , even. She has been frozen for a very long time, and she’s closer to truly freeing herself than she’s been since before she was dragged away screaming from that horrible, horrible wedding.

At last she understands. She’s spent far too long in the realms of fire, and only ice can free her.

_Winter is coming._

A pale beast swoops across her field of vision, and she hears footsteps behind her. When she turns and looks down, Tyrion Lannister looks up at her with a very strange expression. He appears triumphant and satisfied, but somehow also very sad.

_And yet the fire lingers over me still._

She turns away to look back at the waves, but turns sharply when he speaks.

“I know it isn't worth much, coming from me, but I am truly sorry for all that your family has suffered.”

Her head turns so quickly that she would hear it snap if her mind weren’t reeling, because he knows, he knows, what do I do, he knows. It’d be alright if it was Davos, but how could it have been Davos, he’s never seen a Stark, he has no way of recognizing her.

But of course it has to be Tyrion Lannister.

She looks back to the sea, determinedly staring at the horizon. After a moment, he sighs, and she hears him walking away.

What kind of apology was that, anyway? If he knows who she is, then he ought to just be glad he doesn’t have Needle through his eye socket.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Rickon's opinion of Wynafryd Manderly is not my own - I adore her.  
> Next: The army lands at Eastwatch-by -the-Sea and sets out for Castle Black.


	4. In the shadows of the North

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The army lands at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and its leaders don't like what they learn.

The castle has at last appeared in the distance. Nan stands at the bow, leaning into the icy wind as though if she feels a warm summer breeze. Davos certainly doesn’t. The air stings his skin even more than it did when he sailed south to treat with Wyman Manderly - more, even, than it did when he set out to find Rickon Stark on Skagos. He is almost afraid of the way she isn’t quite smiling. There’s always been something about the girl with the cockles.

Eastwatch-by-the-Sea is growing ever larger on the line of the horizon, and he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened. The better part of the men they’ve brought over in this massive fleet has never been on a ship at all, let alone for this long. It will be good for them to be on solid land again. But he knows what they are charging into. It won’t be too long before these men are yearning to be back on their ships. He knows he will be. Tyrion Lannister certainly will, and he won’t even be cold, riding dragonback. These men sail to the Wall for coin or for loyalty, never for themselves.

It’s different for Nan. Each day she asks him how long it will be before they make shore. Sometimes he sees her with his map of the far north, trying to calculate how long it will take to ride from Eastwatch to Castle Black. Yesterday he had to tug it out of her hands and remind her that they have no way of knowing what the situation will be like when they get to the Wall. They might not have horses for them to ride west, so they might have to walk. There might be Others waiting for them at Eastwatch, so they might have to fight their way through to Castle Black. There is simply no telling what they will find in the north. But Nan doesn’t seem to care. She honestly wants to be there. What is waiting for her at Castle Black, he wonders, that she is so willing to face the dead?

He hopes that one day he might understand. But that day is nowhere in the near future.

* * *

 

 The girl is Arya Stark. There’s no doubt of that anymore. If nothing else, her reaction to his words yesterday confirms it. But it’s not just that. It’s the slope of her nose and the grey of her eyes. It’s the way she refuses extra blankets when offered and the way she spends half her time staring at the horizon and the other half bent over maps of the north.

She’s the only one on this godsforsaken ship who doesn’t seem to mind the cold. If anything, she embraces it.

He doesn’t quite understand it. Tyrion may love his home at Casterly Rock, but he doesn’t think he would return if it meant running into the arms of the creatures his wet nurse told him about at night to make him behave. And he certainly wouldn’t return bearing arms alongside a member of the family that has destroyed his house as thoroughly as his has hers.

His eyes find the girl, now looking at the maps again. He moves quietly, stepping close enough to see that her eyes are fixed on Castle Black. _I might return_ , he realizes, _if Jaime were there, fighting the monsters alone._

He doesn’t know what kind of piece she is just yet, but he has time to work it out. He’s the only one who knows that she is a piece at all, and so she is on his side of the board, whether she realizes it or not. _Best keep her in the dark about it_ , he decides. _At the moment, she is focused on getting to her brother and defending her home. If she starts to become aware of the game, she might become dangerous._ Tyrion might feel ashamed of fearing a little girl like Arya Stark if it weren’t for the way he’s seen her practice with that tiny sword of hers, and the way she darkens whenever she so much as looks at him.

* * *

When they dock at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the men who come forward to greet them seem almost doubtful that they exist. The faces of the black brothers are pale and sunken, and they look beaten. They look at the ships with hope, but also with something that seems almost like bitterness, as though they had believed that soon enough their watches would have been ended, and they wish that they had been allowed to die rather than keep on fighting a hopeless war.

Davos has often wondered whether their war is hopeless or not. Before now, his war was always King Stannis’s war, and that had always been a little hopeless. But that was different. Westeros has not seen the like of this particular war for thousands of years. The enemy will not take prisoners. There will be no suing for peace, no brutal terms for the losing side to sign. There will only be death.

He doesn’t know if the war is hopeless, if he is fighting a lost cause. But it doesn’t matter. This is the only path. The war is happening no matter what he does, and if he can add his sword to the army of the living, then it is his duty to do so. Davos Seaworth lives by his duty, and he is no stranger to lost causes.

Lord Tyrion climbs off the ship and looks around. Wasting no time, he asks, “Which of you is Cotter Pyke? I seem to remember he commands here?” 

* * *

 

She slips off the ship as the sellswords and Unsullied work to properly anchor the ship. Davos and the Imp are standing before a crowd of men clad in black. She steps just close enough to hear what’s being said.

A tall man has come forward to speak to the dwarf. “Pyke is dead, milord, like as not,” he says. “He set sail for Hardhome and we haven’t heard a word since.”

Tyrion Lannister gives an aggravated grunt. “Who’s commanding in his place, then?”

“Er, I am, milord, at the moment. We’ve sent ravens to Castle Black, but nothing seems to get through the storms.

“Alright then, boy, what’s your name? I seem to faintly recall your face from my last visit to the Wall.”

The man seems a little flustered to be remembered by a Lannister. “I’m called Grenn.”

A voice comes from behind her. “Did I hear you say you’re commander at Eastwatch?” She turns to see an old man with a vaguely familiar face climbing off the next ship.

Grenn looks extremely uncomfortable. “I- er, none of us here have much experience, milord,” he says hastily.

“And why is Eastwatch-by-the-Sea lacking an experienced commander?”

He seems to have a proper answer to this, at least. “Jon - I mean, Lord Snow - decided we needed to get more of the castles manned, even if it was sparsely. He says if we leave them empty, they’ll be the ideal place for the Others to try and break through. So we’ve sent men to a lot of the old castles. Only, even with the wildlings - I mean, Free Folk - there’s not enough men. Anyone with real experience is at one of those, because they need direction in rebuilding, and if there’s an attack, they’ll need a good commander. The Others haven’t really targeted Eastwatch yet, and it’s never been left empty or allowed to fall into disrepair.” He hesitates, before adding, “Also, most of the experienced rangers and all were lost in the Great Ranging. We don’t have many left.”

The Imp’s face and words betray his dismay, but his voice does not. “This is worse than the Lord Commander’s letter led us to believe.”

“That letter must have been sent ages ago, to get to you and for you to get here.”

Tyrion sighs. “Alright. I suppose we need to have a long talk about what must be done with these men, then. Ser Barristan?”

The old man steps forward to join him, and when she hears his name, she realizes why he was familiar. _He was in King’s Landing. A white cloak._ Her father admired this man greatly.

Grenn seems to be becoming more and more uncomfortable, but he squares his shoulders. “We can use Lord Pyke’s solar. He had plenty of maps and letters and scrolls of numbers that I don’t understand, but I suppose they could be useful to someone who knows what they mean.”

“Good,” says the Imp. “Until we’ve established a plan, then, I think we’ll keep the men on the ships. Ser Barristan, you’ll be coming, I expect?”

Barristan Selmy snorts. “The alternative being allowing you to decide the fate of my queen’s men? Of course.”

Tyrion hesitates, then turns to look at her. “Nan, you ought to come, too.” She freezes. Does he mean to reveal her? She knows she must properly reclaim her name, and soon, but she’s not sure she’s ready yet. Still, she steps forward. Her hair is now just past her shoulders, more than long enough to hide her features, so she shakes her head, allowing it to swing forward and cover her face. It’s unlikely that Barristan Selmy will recognize her as Ned Stark’s daughter, but she doesn’t know whether Grenn knows his lord commander well enough to know his features, and he might recognize her as Jon’s sister.

Davos and Ser Barristan are both looking at her in undisguised bewilderment, and she can’t blame them. Why would Tyrion Lannister invite a little girl to what is essentially a war council? It goes against everything that any commander or highborn boy is taught. The request doesn’t make sense, and in all likelihood, she has nothing of value to offer. But as nervous as she is about possibly being revealed before she chooses, she is glad to be included. It makes her feel like a part of the North again.

Grenn seems baffled, and peers at her curiously, but says only, “As you will, milord. The commander’s solar is this way, if you’ll follow me.”

The Imp turns to one of the bald soldiers they brought over on the ships. “Don’t let anyone else disembark until you receive further orders.” The man nods, and Tyrion looks back the Grenn. “Alright then, boy, lead the way.”

* * *

 

The room he leads them to is wide and open, but somehow still miserably dismal. As promised, a huge map of the Wall and the land beyond dominates the table sitting in the middle of the room. It’s held down on all four corners by small, heavy weights. Placed carefully on the map are wooden figures that represent troops. Many of the figures are unornamented black blocks, which surely represent the Night’s Watch. Other figures are more makeshift - the rough wooden blocks that look to be hazardous to one’s skin likely stand for wildlings, and the ones with the jagged hearts carved into the top must represent Stannis’s men.

It’s no Painted Table, Davos thinks, but it will serve.

Ser Barristan steps forward to examine the map more closely, and Davos follows. The map covers the entire Wall, from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea to Westwatch-by-the-Bridge. There are a total of nine-and-ten castles along the wall, but only three-and-ten have any troops stationed there, according to Cotter Pyke’s map. That’s ten more than were manned when Davos left, at least.

“How many men does each of these blocks signify?” Tyrion Lannister asks suddenly, and Davos starts, not having realized that the dwarf was beside him. Grenn winces.

“Only ten, milord.”

Tyrion looks floored. “ _Ten?_ ” Davos shares his dismay - there are only four black blocks positioned at Eastwatch, and most of the other manned castles have only two or three.

Grenn nods grimly. “Milord, when last you visited the Wall, our strength was generously estimated at one thousand. The Old Bear took three hundred in the ranging, and fewer than thirty returned. Then when Lord Pyke left for Hardhome, he took eleven manned ships.  And that was _before_ the Others started attacking.”

Barristan Selmy looks resigned. “And how many men do the Watch have left now?”

He shrugs. “Maybe four hundred? There’s no telling, my lord. We haven’t had any word from Castle Black in far too long, so we don’t know of their losses.”

Davos hears a small noise behind him. When the men turn to her, Nan fixes her eyes on the ground, but says, “How do you know that Castle Black hasn’t fallen? If you haven’t heard from them , I mean.”

Grenn looks less than comfortable answering to a little girl, but Tyrion did request her presence, so he answers. “We can’t rightly know. But Castle Black has the biggest garrison of any castle along the Wall, because that’s the only place the Others seem to be really interested in. We do get wights everywhere else, though, and the wights are still mostly dressed like wildlings, plus the brothers who died at the Fist. We figure that if Castle Black was fallen, we’d see a lot more wights in black. And we figure they’d start attacking from both sides.”

Davos watches the girl’s face and wonders whether she knew what she was getting into when she stepped onto his ship. Then he looks at the faces of the other men, and wonders whether _they_ knew.

(He certainly didn’t.)

He clears his throat and steers the conversation back towards the subject of number. “Four hundred, then? How many wildlings? And Stannis’s men?”

“Thousands of wildlings came through the wall, but many just settled in the Gift. There are maybe a thousand who’ve agreed to fight alongside us. But we can’t be too sure of their loyalty, as they’ve been fighting the Watch for hundreds of years.”

Davos frowns again, then realizes the last part of his question has not been addressed. “The king’s men, Grenn?”

Green shrugs. “I heard Stannis was going after Winterfell. Most of his men went with him. Haven’t had word since.”

He ignores the sinking feeling in his gut and sits down heavily in one of the chairs scattered around the room. “Very well. We have roughly ten thousand swords waiting to disembark, Grenn. We’d best decide what to do with them.”


	5. The sword is sharp, the spear is long

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon remembers an old story, Arya explores Eastwatch, and Alayne has trouble keeping her patience with the lord of the Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, in this one I've got a brief Alayne segment. Not much happens, and it's mostly there to begin establishing Sansa's storyline in this fic, but writing it, I discovered that Sansa is a character that really doesn't come easy to me. I think what I've got is pretty good, but as we get further in her storyline, I'd appreciate if you'd tell me if you think she's out of character. (Once she's interacting with other POVs I'll stick to them to avoid messing up her internal monologue.)  
> So, yeah, Sansa's a struggle for me to write. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

He stands at the edge of the Wall, looking down over the great field of snow between the trees and the barrier. _This is our battlefield_ , he thinks, _and it is much too small_.

“The days are getting shorter.”

He knew Satin was there, of course. His steward isn’t very quiet when he walks.

“No,” he says. “The days aren’t getting shorter. The nights are getting longer.”

He can feel Satin’s frown without looking. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Jon turns now, and fixes the boy with a look that makes him gulp in fear - of the response or of the lord commander himself, he’s not quite sure.

Neither says any more on the topic, and Jon turns to face the open air again. “What we need is dragonglass,” he says. “We have several dozen arrowheads, perhaps a dozen spearheads, and a few daggers, from the Fist. It isn’t enough.”

Satin begins to say something, but Jon cuts him off. “The maester at Winterfell once told me that in the early days of the Watch, the children of the forest gave us a gift of a hundred dragonglass daggers each year. They can’t all be gone. There are rooms in the tunnels beneath Castle Black that haven’t been opened for hundreds of years. Search them. Without those weapons, we won’t last another month.”

He thinks Satin might be about to say something, but he only hears the rustle of cloth as the boy bows and shuffles away, back towards the winch elevator. Jon takes a deep breath of the frigid air and closes his eyes, shutting out the view of the carnage below.

They lost nearly a hundred this week alone. They are running out of _time._

He thinks of the letter sent away to Meereen a world away. The dragon queen may not even be coming. None of the others did, except Stannis, and where is Stannis now? They haven’t heard from him or most of his men in months.

_If you’re coming, Daenerys Targaryen... come now, or you will find only rubble where you expected a kingdom. Some of your house might have been content to rule the ashes, but you will find no ashes here. Ice does not burn._

* * *

 

 She stands in the highest tower of Eastwatch and looks down over the work that’s being done. As decided by Ser Barristan, Davos, and the Imp, and agreed to by Grenn, the ships are being emptied one by one. Unsullied and sellswords pour down the gangplank of the ship currently being unloaded. Between them, they are carry everything on the ship. Rope hammocks from below deck, desks and beds used by the captains, their remaining rations and the crates that hold them, trunks of furs purchased from traders in the Free Cities before departure - everything will be taken. Everything will be used. The Watch has close to nothing. Wood and rope can be used for repairs and barricades, or else burned; the food will come west with them, as the brothers have barely enough to feed themselves; the furs will not be enough (they were bought in the south, and the men who made them do not know cold) but they will help.

Farther onto land, men are dismantling the ships that have already been unloaded. Wood is such a valuable resource here that not a single plank will be allowed to go to waste. A large group of Unsullied are working tirelessly, using the boards to shape huge sledges which will carry the remaining wood. They have so much wood that they’ll be able to leave two sledges at every manned castle they pass, and will have enough left to send men on to bring wood to the rest of the castles. Even there will be huge amounts left over - thirty ships means thirty sledges, and there are only three-and-ten garrisoned castles. When they set sail, they didn’t realize how useful the ships would be.

She would ask if she could help, but she would only be in the way. Instead, she explores the castle of Eastwatch like she used to explore the abandoned buildings of Winterfell when she was young. It is smaller than Winterfell, of course, but still there are countless halls and rooms that look as though they have not been opened in centuries. She wanders these halls as the men work, turning in a new whenever she hears movement and doing everything she can to avoid meeting anyone who might ever have seen Jon Snow _or_ Ned Stark, or the Lady Lyanna, for that matter, since many of these men ended up at the Wall after fighting on the wrong side of Robert’s Rebellion. Some of the rooms clearly used to hold food, but are now empty save for shelves and crates. She makes a mental note of these to mention to Davos or Tyrion - if wood is as essential as it seems, then the brothers will appreciate the find. Other rooms hold old weapons, and she realizes that the ranks of the Watch have become so depleted that they don’t have enough men to wield the weapons they have. She finds a dagger in a leather sheath attached to a belt, unrusted even after all the years it must have lain forgotten. Something in her stomach twists when she sees that its hilt is crafted in the shape of a wolf’s head, and she  straps the belt around her waist. She roots about in the storeroom a while longer before she uncovers another empty sheath. It’s a little too big for Needle, but it’s close enough, so she slips its loop onto her belt.

Then she finds the room with the black glass.

When she reaches into the first crate, she feels a sharp pain in her fingers, and she draws them out to see blood. She sucks on the wound and reaches in more tentatively with her other hand. The crate is mostly full of daggers, each about the length of her forearm. Even the hilts appear to be made of the glass - dragonglass, she’s fairly sure - wrapped in some kind of frayed cloth. The air in the room is thick with dust, and she’s sure no one’s been here for hundreds of years, but the blades are still apparently sharp enough to cut.

She picks one up and sticks it through her belt. She’ll go back to the other room later to find a sheath for it - Davos isn’t going to like her carrying this many weapons, but he won’t try to stop her.

She moves on to the next crate. This one is covered, but the lid comes off easily, and she finds that it is filled with dragonglass arrowheads. She likes the look of them, so she slips a few into her pocket. The next box is also full of arrowheads, and the next. With some effort, she stacks them all next to the door.

Why is there so much dragonglass here?

Why does the Watch have so much dragonglass? She thinks back to her lessons. The maesters call the glass obsidian, she knows, and...

And it’s rumored to be one of the only things that works against the Others.

She remembers now. The Children of the Forest used to give the Watch dragonglass in huge quantities. She looks at the crates surrounding her and wonders if anyone even knows they are here. It it’s true that it can kill the Others, how many lives may have been saved if someone had found this storeroom?

She moves farther in. The light from the torches in the corridor outside doesn’t quite reach the back of the room, so she has to squint to make out the rack that runs along the far wall, and - oh, those are _swords_.

The one on the end is lighter than she expects when she carefully removes it from the rack by the hilt. It’s still a little heavy, but not overly so - the balance is perfect. _A sword made of dragonglass -_ _Septa Mordane would throw a fit._ There’s an open crate to her right full of sheaths, and when she takes one out to try with the sword, it fits perfectly.

That goes onto the belt, too. Davos _definitely_ isn’t going to be happy about all her new weapons. But he _will_ be happy about this cache of dragonglass, and it never would’ve been unsurfaced if it wasn’t for her, so she’s sure he will hold his tongue.

She leaves the room with a reassuring weight at her hip. By tomorrow, this room will be swarming with black brothers and sellswords, but she’s done here - perhaps, while they’re bickering over the swords, she will find herself some new leathers. These clothes served her well in Braavos, but Braavos was warm. Here, winter has come, and it will only get colder.

* * *

 

Sweetrobin is fussing again. As much as she tries to keep her patience, Alayne is growing desperate. The boy won’t _eat_ anything. Not anything she can get him now, anyway. Last week he was demanding peaches - _peaches_ , when winter has already set in and almost all trade in and out of the Vale is cut off. They have more than enough in storage to get them through winter (though Alayne sometimes doubts this; the coming winter is almost certainly going to be longer than any in living memory), but it’s all dry, nonperishable food. The only meat they have is goat, and the occasional pig. Many of the chickens died before the people of the Vale managed to properly insulate the coops, so egg production is down, as well.

And now the lord of the Vale is asking for _lemon cakes._

“Why _not_?” he whines when she tells him that she’s very sorry, Lord Robert, but she can’t bring him lemon cakes. “I’m the lord of the Vale! There should be lemon cakes if I want them!”

“There aren’t any lemons, Sweetrobin, how could there be lemon cakes.”

He frowns. “But I’m _lord_.”

Alayne suppresses a sigh. She knows it’s a good thing that he’s been spending time with the lord of Runestone - he needs to learn what it means to be an Arryn, and Petyr certainly hasn’t been teaching him - but though Yohn Royce does seem to have explained to Robert that his position comes with power, the boy has become confused over what those powers are.

“Not even the lord of the Vale can command the plants to grow, Sweetrobin.”

He thinks for a moment. “ _Strawberries_ , then.”

Alayne lifts her eyes to the clouds and hopes that she can survive the week remaining until Lord Royce returns. She is running out of patience.

* * *

Jon stands in his solar and surveys the spread that has been laid out on his desk. Two of the younger stewards stand in the corner, glancing nervously between him, the desk, and the door. He dismisses them with a wave of his hand, then carefully picks up the dagger. It’s exactly like the ones he found at the Fist of the First Men. When he tests it with his finger, he finds that it is just as sharp.

“How many of these did you find?”

The old builder who was sent to show him their findings shrugs. “Five hundred, so far? They’re still clearing the rooms, milord.”

He nods. “And the arrowheads?”

“Harder to count. Maybe three thousand.”

Jon drops the dagger and carefully lifts the sword. It’s well balanced, and not nearly as fragile as he feels it should be. Dragonglass isn’t the sort of material that one expects to be sturdy when carved so long and thin - but, weighing it in his hands, he doesn’t think he could break the thing if he tried.

As if reading his mind, the builder says, “We’ve maybe two hundred of those. Not sure how they’re so solid. I s’pose the brothers had methods back then that’ve been lost.”

“Not the brothers,” Jon said quietly. “The children.”

The builder frowned. “The children are just a myth, milord.”

 _Then how am I still here?_ He didn’t correct him, though. Instead, he commanded, “Leave me. Tell the others that they are to begin an official count of the weapons. I want to know how many we can send out to the other castles while still sufficiently arming the men here.”

The man bowed and left the room. Jon put the sword down.

 _Enough daggers to arm every man. Plenty of arrowheads, and enough swords at least for every good swordsman._ Somehow, though, he could not shake the feeling that it would not be enough. _All the weapons in the world won’t do any good without men to wield them._

They haven’t had any contact with the world beyond Castle Black in almost two months, since they lost contact with Eastwatch. It’s been almost four months since they heard from anyone beyond the Wall as a whole. When he looks at the fierce snows that obstruct all vision outdoors on most nights, he realizes that it’s very possible that his letter to Daenerys Targaryen never even reached her. But he can’t afford to believe that. Without the dragons, all hope is lost.


	6. Through shadows to the edge of night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya on the road, Jon deals with a queen, Bran looks south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm very sorry about the wait. The worst part is, what I'm posting today has been ready for like a month - the two other segments that I had planned to post in this chapter were both getting very long and giving me a ton of trouble, so I decided to post what I have as a chapter and keep working. The good news is that means the next chapter should be up more quickly.

They don’t let her have a horse.

She knows this is reasonable - as far as they know, she’s no one important, and there are very few horses to go around, anyway. There’s no reason that she should get one of them. That doesn’t mean it irks her any less.

She finds a seat on one of the sledges. Like all the others, it will be pulled by some of the Unsullied, which Davos seems a little uncomfortable with, but there isn’t really an alternative - they don’t have enough horses to drag thirty sledges, and the sellswords would complain endlessly if asked to do it.

So she settles in among the planks and sharpens Needle with a stolen whetstone as she watches Eastwatch-by-the-Sea grow farther and farther away.They should reach Greenguard within a day, and Torches after that. Then Long Barrow, and then Sable Hall. _Then_ they will reach Castle Black. She’s been fighting to get there for years, but now that she’s so close, she realizes she’s never really thought about what she would do once she got there.

Jon will know her, of that she is sure. He’ll know her no matter how long it’s been, no matter how dirty her face is or how short her hair is. And then she thinks she’ll finally be able to know herself.

She’s determined to be useful. She doesn’t know how yet, but she won’t just watch the world end without trying to help stop it.

* * *

The queen is clearly unhappy about being summoned to such lowly quarters, but Jon hasn’t moved out of Donnell Noye’s rooms, and he won’t do it just for her. She’s the one who demanded to see him, not the other way around, so she has no right complaining. She complains, anyway.

The princess is less uptight. Her dark hair is swept forward to cover her scarred face, but from behind it, she looks curiously around the room. Jon notices the way she keeps looking back at the weapons he’s laid out on a table pressed against the wall.

Selyse notices too. She glares at her daughter, and Shireen looks down quickly, staring at her hands.

It’s not a pleasant meeting. In truth, it’s exactly like all the ones before it. Selyse has periodically demanded to see him, and every time, she has asked the same questions.

Just like every time before, he has no answers. Certainly not the ones she wants.

“Have you any word from my husband?” she asks first, as she always does.

Jon suppresses a sigh. “No ravens have made their way through the snows for months, Your Grace. Any message your husband may have tried to send has been lost.”

She knew the answer to the question already, of course, so she does not press it. Instead, she moves on. “When will the Nightfort be ready for my arrival?” she asks.

This one is even worse, but as always, the answer is the same. “The storms are too vicious for you to travel west without a substantial escort, Your Grace, and we cannot spare the men.”

_And there may be worse than snow out there_ , he doesn’t say. _Any of the castles could have fallen and we wouldn’t know until we walked right into the waiting arms of the dead._

It goes on and on. Selyse wants to know _everything_ , even though all that he tells her, she already knew. She asks about their food supply, the weapons at their disposal (though she doesn’t ask about the dragonglass, which is strange), when more men will arrive.

This last question nearly caused him to burst into laughter the first time he heard it. What misguided fantasy is she living in? Selyse can be infuriating, but she is not a stupid woman. So why is she under the impression that they are expecting reinforcements? There’s the dragon queen, of course, but he’s told no one about that letter, not wanting to create false hope.

It ends at last, and she turns towards the door. “I will call upon you again in one week’s time,” she informs him without looking back at him, and sweeps out of the room.

The princess stays where she is, looking at the dragonglass weapons again now that her mother is not here to scold her. Jon rises and comes out from behind his desk to join her.

“What will they do?” Shireen asks, not looking at him.

His hesitation before answering comes only from concern over how the queen will react to him discussing anything violent with her daughter. “The weapons? They’re the only thing we have that we know will work against the Others,” he tells her anyway.

She looks alarmed. “This isn’t all we have, is it?” she asks.

Jon smiles a little for the first time in - how long? Months, at least. “No, princess, there’s more than enough to arm everyone in Castle Black.”

She looks thoughtful. “Everyone?”

Without really thinking about it, he schools his face into a gravely serious expression and takes the dagger from the table. “Everyone,” he says, and hands it to her hilt-first.

* * *

Lord Brynden has told him that he will one day be able to see everything that will happen or may happen, but try as he might, the boy in the tree sees nothing but snow.

He’s looked all over the North, everywhere that has a heart tree, and he’s seen nothing but white, not even a worshipper. There are few weirwoods in the south, but there are still heart trees on the Isle of Faces, and when he looks through their eyes, he found that there is snow there, too, though not as much.

When he looks through eyes north of the Wall, he wishes he saw only the white. Most of the snow he can see is all beaten down, and twice he’s actually seen the ones who trampled it. They are heading south, always south, and they seem to be endless. Maybe they are.

Before pulling his mind out of the sprawling system of roots and eyes, he goes south again. And, looking out of eyes just above the Neck, he sees something that is not dead and is not cold and is _not_ snow.

Great golden eyes stare into his red ones. Behind them, hundreds of other eyes, black or brown, also loom, but he sees only the gold. She holds the gaze for a long moment before turning her back and leaving the clearing. The pack follows her, but the boy barely sees them, and when Meera shakes him hard enough to snap him out of the trance, his mind is still buzzing with one word.

_Sister._

* * *

They’ve been on the road for six days and visited two of the castles. They should be farther, but the snow is slowing them down significantly. It’s thick, and wet, and Davos is afraid that if they drive the horses to go any faster one of them will twist an ankle.

She doesn’t mention that if a horse twisted an ankle they’d have fresh meat. She feels a little bad for thinking it, but this _is_ war, after all, even if they aren’t really fighting yet.

No, that isn’t true. They _are_ fighting. Snow and ice are the weapons of the Others, wearing them down before they ever cross blades with the enemy. The men of the Wall understand this better than anyone.

If Eastwatch was bleak, Greenguard and Torches were positively barren. Greenguard was manned by a wildling clan who had been at a loss for how to make the castle in any way defensible without any building material. They were more than relieved to be given such a huge supply of wood, though they hadn’t shown it much.

Torches was garrisoned even more sparsely, with a very small group of Night’s Watchmen. They were so few and so skinny that she had doubts that the wood would do them any good, but she didn’t say that. They left some food there, too, though she doubts it will do much more than prolong the men’s lives a few days. She didn’t say this, of course, but she can’t be the only one who thought so.

They’re coming upon Long Barrow, now. This is the one garrisoned by the wildling spearwives, she remembers. Grenn told them of the Lord Commander’s dilemma when trying to man the abandoned castles - most of his men would vehemently protest if asked to fight alongside “wildling whores”, but it would be unspeakably foolish to squander so many good fighters, especially seeing as they had more experience against the Others and wights than most of the Watch. So the Lord Commander sent them off to one of the abandoned castles, under a few of his own men. The men who oppose the spearwives’ being allowed to fight can ignore it if they choose, but the women are free to fight the enemy and defend the Wall. She is both excited and a little afraid to meet these women. They are here only to defend their people who have apparently settled in the Gift. They have no true allegiance to the Night’s Watch, and no matter how intrigued she is at the idea of so many fighting women in one place, not ridiculed for it, they are still wildlings, the villains of Old Nan’s stories who she dressed up as to frighten Sansa.

But they are all on the same side now.

When she hops off her perch upon the sledge to walk through the gates of Long Barrow on her own two feet, her ankle gets caught in a loop of stray rope protruding from between two planks. She lets out a curse that her septa would have smacked her for, but before she can throw out her arms to catch herself, strong hands catch her around the shoulders and pulls her upright. She jerks away and whirls around, ready to snarl at whoever had grabbed her - she can help _herself_ \- but her words die on her lips.

She knows that the Unsullied are the greatest part of the army, and generally the best fighters, so she is grateful to them, but she will never admit that they scare her, too.

The one standing in front of her has broken the seemingly permanent blank expression that the Unsullied are always wearing to smile faintly at her. She fumbled for something to say, but ends up just muttering, “Thank you,” and starting to turn away.

“This one is Grey Worm,” he says, and she looks back to find that he is watching her thoughtfully. He seems to be waiting for a response, so she introduces herself.

“My name is Nan.”

He seems to be searching for words, and when he speaks, she realizes that he was trying to find polite words in the Common Tongue. “May this one ask why a little girl is with the queen’s army?”

Well, of course he means Daenerys Targaryen, not Cersei Lannister, but it takes her a moment to realize that.

_I’m not a little girl_ , she almost says, but doesn’t. The Unsullied don’t care much for age or gender, and this man doesn’t have enough grasp of the Common Tongue to see his own words as derisive. He is most likely simply expressing concern over the presence of a person who seems unlikely to be able to defend herself, and as much as she’d like to resent him for that, she can’t, really. She doesn’t look strong enough to fight, and though she’d stronger than she looks, she knows that she should be stronger if she wants to make a difference. She wishes she could train, but there is no one to ask. (No one in Westeros knows the Water Dance, she thinks sadly, and misses Syrio more than ever.)

So she says only what must be said to answer his question. “I need to find my brother.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be "Alive without breath, as cold as death" - The reinforcements come face-to-face with the enemy, and the first major attack is launched on Castle Black. Also, Sam enters the story.


End file.
